Live as I have lived and love as I have loved
by wild wolf free17
Summary: In the worst possible timeline, Steve jumped after Bucky.
1. Chapter 1

Title: Live as I have lived and love as I have loved

Disclaimer: not my characters; title from Lord Byron

Warnings: talk of major character death/violence/brainwashing/torture

Pairings: Steve/Bucky

Rating: PG  
Wordcount: 545

Point of view: third

Prompt: Any, any, Dopplegangland [BTVS]

Note: Steve Prime is from the movieverse. I have three parts, including this one, but I'd love prompts.

* * *

"Well, this is awkward," Tony says into the silence after the second Steve drops out of the portal.

The two Steves are staring at each other, heads tilted to the same side. Steve Prime, the _right_ Steve, is wearing blue jeans and a plain white shirt, and his hair is shorter. The new Steve has on black pants and a gray sweatshirt, and his hair is about as long as -

"Oh, shit," Tony says. "Please don't be a Winter Soldier."

Mirror!Steve's eyes go straight to him, face as blank as Robocop's. "Stark," he says calmly. "I know I killed you."

"Shit," Tony repeats.

.

The two Steves can't stand each other. The only person Mirror!Steve seems to actually like is the good old Buckcicle, so Tony leaves them to whatever trouble they can find while he, Bruce, and Jane figure out how to get Mirror!Steve home.

Mirror!Steve is actively frightening in a way that Bucky in Winter Soldier mode isn't. It can't be that Mirror!Steve killed him, because Winter Soldier Prime killed Tony's parents.

"Maybe it's that we never knew Bucky Barnes before," Jane finally offers after fourteen straight hours in the lab.

Maybe. That sounds right, actually. Bucky Barnes was a good man, and he still is, most of the time. But Mirror!Steve - fuck, but Steve Prime must be going out of his mind.

How horrible is it to see what you could've been? Tony's been wondering about alternate selves for awhile, but now... no. He never wants to meet himself, not if it'll be anything like Steve Prime and Mirror!Steve.

.

Watching Steve Prime and Bucky spar is always a pleasure because it's fucking hot. Watching Mirror!Steve and Bucky spar - it is mind-numbingly terrifying. Neither one of them holds back, and at the end, when both have multiple broken bones, they kiss with blood on their lips.

Steve Prime flees the room and everyone else makes themselves scarce.

.

When they finally figure out the way to send Mirror!Steve home, he doesn't thank them. He's barely said two words to anyone who isn't Bucky. Tony's tried not to think about what that world must be like.

He knows for a fact there isn't a Bucky Barnes.

Mirror!Steve kisses Bucky, a gentle, lingering kiss like nothing any of them have seen from him for the whole goddamned month, and he whispers, "I miss you so much, Bucky." Their foreheads rest together, their long hair tangling, and he says, "You'd hate what I've become."

"No, I wouldn't," Bucky says. Steve Prime's eyes are closed, his lips pressed together, and Tony never wants to see that expression on his face ever again. "It doesn't matter what happens," Bucky says, "what you do, what you're made into. I'll love you 'til the end of the line, Steve. 'til the end and to whatever comes after."

Mirror!Steve holds onto him for a good five minutes and no one says a thing. But finally he pulls away and Bucky lets go, and Tony rips a hole in the fabric of reality. Mirror!Steve steps through and he doesn't look back.

.

It's weeks before Steve and Bucky spar again. Before they're cuddling everywhere, sickeningly adorable, again. Before Bucky starts talking again.

Tony wants to ask _so much_, but he never ever does.


	2. Chapter 2

Same warning as before, except adding major character death.

* * *

Bucky falls, so Steve jumps after him. They land dozens of feet apart and Bucky's hurt worse, his arm nearly wrenched off by something. Steve's head is fuzzy and he knows he's not thinking straight, but all he can do is curl up around Bucky and hope Stark and the Commandos find them soon.

.

They're found, but it's not by Stark and the Commandos.

Bucky's been out of it for days, and Steve's not far behind. He's mumbling about Brooklyn summers, about coffee and colored pencils, about the Grand Canyon, and the Russians practically stumble across them, jabbering too fast for Steve's scant knowledge of the language to keep up. Bucky's like ice in his arms, breath barely there, and when the Russian soldiers pull him away, Steve's too slow, too tired, too cold –

They shoot him in the head. Steve's mind goes white.

.

Steve is not Steve for a very long time. It has no name. It is a weapon, it is aimed, it is let loose, it returns obediently, submits for maintenance, and is stored away again until needed.

For a very long time, it is a weapon. But it remembers in glances, in stolen moments. It remembers and hoards the memories like treasures, and it turns them over, one at a time.

It remembers blue eyes, strong hands, a bright laugh. It remembers _Stevie_ from a warm voice on a warmer night. It remembers falling and cold and promising that they'd be warm again to the blue eyes, to the strong hands, to the – the fading laugh.

It remembers a gunshot.

There is not one thing in particular that wakes him up, from where he's been sleeping inside the weapon. There's a lot of things. At the bottom of them, deep in what's left of Steve Rogers' heart, there is an all encompassing rage that needs to be let out.

So he lets it out.

.

It is 1997 when the weapon shatters and Steve Rogers comes back to life. It is a bad year for Hydra. For everyone, really. Once, Steve Rogers fought for the little guy, for the right thing.

Steve Rogers died with Bucky Barnes in the mountains. So what's left of him starts with Hydra and goes from there.

Once, Steve Rogers minimized damage where he could, worried about causalities, civilians, and non-combatants. Once, Steve Rogers had lines he wouldn't cross. Lines he wouldn't let his men cross. Lines he swore to never let Bucky cross, because he knew that whatever Bucky said, he'd regret it later. Bucky talked about doing what Steve couldn't, what Steve wouldn't, keeping Steve's hands clean.

Steve's hands are drenched with red because he was too slow. If he's even Steve anymore. He doesn't think so.

No. Steven Grant Rogers died with James Buchanan Barnes in the mountains. And he's going to make the world pay for it.

.

SHIELD notices almost immediately, of course. The people on their watch-lists, the organizations they've been listening to – well, somebody's going through them like a katana through a scarf.

But it's not till Alexander Pierce turns up minus a head that anybody realizes what's been growing inside SHIELD from the beginning.

_I'll be coming for the next two_ is scrawled messily in Pierce's blood and there isn't a soul who sees it that isn't chilled to the core.

.

Once, Steve Rogers made a name for himself on the battlefields of the worst war in human memory. He's in the history books for it.

He died a hero, capturing the man who gave them the intel needed to save the United States from a genocidal madman's final solution.

What no one alive knows is that Captain America was delivered to that man and turned into the finest weapon ever forged.

(He'll realize later that he could have fought. Would have. If Bucky hadn't died. If he hadn't failed. They left Bucky there, cold and still, and he went back, 50 years too late, he went back. He couldn't find Bucky.

The world pays for that, too.)

.

In 2006, almost a decade after he wakes up with hate in his heart, Howard Stark's son tracks him down. Every intelligence agency in the world is trying to find him, but Stark's son is the only person to manage it.

He rambles about nothing, pacing around the room, gaze warily going to and away from – well, he doesn't have a name anymore. He should have a name. Not Steve, though. Steve died with Bucky.

"Hey, Cap," Stark says, "are you listening to me?"

"No," he replies, fingers on his most-used knife. (His favorite, he thinks sometimes. Because he has opinions now.)

Stark nods, licking his lips. "Okay. Well, I just – I know Dad helped you. So, I guess, I am, too. 'cause –" He pauses and then his eyes go wide.

"Shit," he says. "You're – not the Captain America from all his stories, are you?" Like the trail of carnage he followed shouldn't have told him that.

The man who was once a weapon, and before that Steve Rogers, shakes his head. "Does anyone know you're here?" he asks.

Stark backs up and opens his mouth – and there is a knife in his throat. He dies cleanly and quickly, and his body is never found.

.

All of his kills are attributed to terrorists or random violence. That one man could be doing it – no, impossible. He is in some files as the Winter Soldier, but that intel is old, out-dated. He spent half a century as a ghost. He is very good at disappearing.

He dresses like a civilian, most of the time. In harmless clothes. He keeps his hair to the same length it was when he woke up, a memorial to the mindless asset. It is the only memorial granted to that ghost.

He takes the name James. Bucky didn't like it because he thought it was common. There were too many James' in the world.

Now there are too few and one more.

.

He does not age. He does not die.

When the alien leads an invasion into New York, SHIELD barely fights it off, and only because the giant green beast provides an indestructible distraction. SHIELD is weak due to the Hydra infection that has barely been excised.

James goes to New York. He needs to rest; there are always enemies and he is tired. Has been tired since… 1944. So he dresses like a harmless grad student and helps with the clean-up – he removes rubble, serves meals to volunteers and homeless alike, and feels the most like Steve Rogers he has since Bucky died.

So he stays.


	3. Chapter 3

In early spring, while he is reading_ The Hobbit_/, he feels the floor beneath him vanish and he is falling falling _falling_ - he lands on his feet in a _lab_ and there are four people present: three men, one woman. One of the men has his own face.

"Well, this is awkward," one of the men says while he stares at the one with his face, with hair shorter than he's had it since the war. And then, "Oh, shit," the same man speaks again. "Please don't be a Winter Soldier."

And that – he glances over. He knows that face. "Stark," he says, "I know I killed you."

This is not a hallucination; he knows how those feel. Nor is it a dream. And he fell.

"Shit," Stark says again.

The man with his face is tense, body held like a coiled spring. James keeps himself loose.

"Um," the woman says. "Oops."

And then Bucky walks into the lab. "Stark," he's saying, "time's up –"

James looks at him and it feels like he's breaking all over again, mind gone white.

.

Bucky is – Bucky –

Bucky takes him by the hand and leads him to the roof. James has no idea what to say, where to even start, and Bucky lets him keep his silence, just settles next to him.

James doesn't ask about the arm. Doesn't ask why Bucky moves the exact same way he does. Doesn't ask how he's alive. How the man with his own face is alive.

He feels the rage coming back. Why is _this_ Bucky alive when _his_ isn't?

He lasts three days before Bucky pulls him to the gym. Three days of avoiding the man with his face, the scientists, the spies. Three days of following Bucky around like the ghost he spent 50 years being, of watching the same programs he watched in his own shit apartment in New York, of eating the same take-out (ordered by someone called Jarvis, who calls James 'Mirror Captain Rogers' , probably because that's what Stark calls him), of trying not to scream and kill every single person in a square mile radius.

"Fight me, Stevie," Bucky tells him, smirking that infuriating smirk from when they were boys.

James - _Steve_ grins back at him and attacks.

It's the most alive he's felt since he fell after Bucky. He doesn't hold back at all, doesn't shy away from the rage and the hate and the pain, and Bucky hits just as hard, moves just as fast, and Steve punches and kicks and dodges and finally they're on the ground, bleeding and bruised and broken, and he does not know, will never know, who moves first – but he's kissing Bucky, sobbing and laughing, and Bucky's holding him and he's holding Bucky, and he just wants –

He should have died in the mountains with Bucky. Bucky shouldn't have left him alone.

They don't leave the gym until after dawn and Bucky leads him back to his room (the one he's sharing with the man with his face), strips them both, shoves him into the shower, and climbs in with him.

They don't talk. But after, Bucky drags him onto the bed, pulls the blankets up over them both, and says, "Sleep. We both need it, Steve."

"Okay," he says. He doesn't expect to actually sleep, but he wakes up that night, with Bucky sprawled over him, and he feels so safe, so warm, so alive.

.

Stark sits everyone down to explain why they have to send Steve back to his own world.

He doesn't want to go back. There is no Bucky there. The man with his face is glaring at him while he holds Bucky's hand beneath the table

But if he stays, Stark says in that rambling, nonsensical way of his, then it's entirely possible that the universe will implode. Stark's honestly not sure. But it seems foolish to risk it.

He is holding Bucky's hand. Seventy years after Bucky died because Steve Rogers failed, he is holding Bucky's hand. Bucky's alive here.

The man who was once Steve Rogers cannot risk a world where Bucky Barnes is still alive, so whenever Stark and the other scientists find a way back, he will go.

.

Another two weeks pass. He spends them with Bucky. They talk some. In the dead of night, he confesses into Bucky's skin everything he never said. They spar again.

Once, they compare Hydra stories. Later that same day, they talk about their revenge. Bucky smiles, bright and fierce, when he talks about how Pierce begged for his life.

He spends one morning trying to figure out where their worlds diverged. He wants to demand of the man with his face why he didn't follow Bucky, but he doesn't. He doesn't think he could stand the answer.

.

The night before he has to go back, he cries himself to sleep in Bucky's arms. Bucky holds him and they both pretend they're young again, untouched by war and time and oceans of blood. It wasn't that bad a life, what they had. They were together.

If he could go back –

But he can't go back. Not to _his_ Bucky.

So while Stark and Foster and Banner are setting everything up, Steve wraps himself around Bucky and confesses, "I miss you so much, Bucky." And then, what he's absolutely terrified of: "You'd hate what I've become."

And Bucky – with his eyes closed, his forehead against Bucky's, Steve can almost pretend that they're back in their shitty apartment, young together again, and Bucky says softly, "No, I wouldn't." Steve can feel him breathing, feel his pulse, hear his heartbeat, and he says, lips brushing against Steve's skin, "It doesn't matter what happens, what you do, what you're made into. I'll love you 'til the end of the line, Steve. 'til the end and to whatever comes after."

He can't let go. He doesn't know how long he can't let go, but he eventually he steps back. He walks to the portal and he steps through, back to a nothing world.

_The Hobbit_ is on the floor where he left it. All the perishable food has gone bad.

He hasn't killed anyone in seven years. But he's in a world without Bucky Barnes again. He's in the world that let Bucky die.

He leaves his apartment with the taste of Bucky still on his lips.

.

He dreams of Brooklyn, of Bucky laughing, of the Grand Canyon and Bucky talking about geological ages, of sketching Bucky asleep and awake and alive.

There are so many people alive who aren't worth the air it takes to keep them that way, and Bucky's lost in the mountains, barely a footnote in history when he was the greatest person to ever live.

And Steve –

Well. He's still angry about that. He's got nothing left but the rage, sunk deep into his bones, and stirred up again because there's a Bucky somewhere. Just not here.

He should have died in the mountains with Bucky. Wishes, with every breath, that he had.

He loses himself in the hunt, in the kill, in the retribution, and every time he closes his eyes to sleep, he prays for Bucky to forgive him one day.


End file.
